Sarah Palin's legal team doesn't understand DNS

A reader writes, "The person who owned the domain CrackHo.com set it up to redirect to Sarah Palin's website on the Alaska state site. No one used the site, but apparently someone got upset: Palin's lawyers sent a cease & desist, claiming that it was misuse of the Alaskan seal and copyright infringement.
Note, that CrackHo didn't copy anything or use any of the content. It was just a simple redirect to the Alaska website."

Timothy Hutton may have a correct point here. We have no evidence that Palin herself asked for this intervention or is even aware of it.

That said, the rest of the claim is nonsense. There’s no such thing as “Sarah Palin Derangement Syndrome.” The woman is an incompetent, anti-science, anti-intellectual idiot. The evidence for that is overwhelming. (Fruit flies anyone?)

Somehow the last offering on a Google search of my nom de plume links to a porn catalog that seemingly includes illegal teeny teenie stuff. I think it’s because of an otherwise innocuous word in the title of one of my works.

DNS? The A record of crackho.com wasn’t set to the same as gov.state.ak.us, it was an HTML meta refresh, not even a 30x from the web server.

Changing the A Record for crackho.com would have worked, been more effective (since the URL bar would say crackho.com instead of gov.state.ak.us) and more likely to generate a C&D.

Normally a site should check the Host header it is being sent and only return the page when it matches what is expected, but not in this case, so people, feel free to change your A records and see if you get a C&D.

This is the same person who was wailing about her email account being “hacked” when actually she’d put an incredibly obvious password clue on the account (which she was illegally using to conduct state business on in the first place). Color me shocked.

The fundamental fact of DNS is that ordinary people don’t know (or care) how it works. So all they see is that the crackho.com URL points to Sarah Palin’s site. If someone were to forward that URL to, say, my mother, what would she think?

Either:

a) Sarah Palin decided to do this to herself. Not likely.

b) Sarah Palin’s site has somehow been hacked or cracked or something. Bad for Sarah Palin’s image.

And b) is the key factor here. Whatever you geeks think is unimportant. Geeks don’t matter in this instance. Ordinary people matter.

The issue regarding alleged misuse of domain names is centered on whether the domain name was registered or used in bad faith.

Bad faith can include “(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.”

So here’s the deal. A while back during the election I created a new front page for crackho.com. I redirected traffic to the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s website. I never had the official seal or anything from her site on my server. It was a simple redirect using the meta refresh tag. I didn’t think anyone would notice. Ooops. [emphasis added]

First off, why wouldn’t anyone notice? I’m sure he told a few friends, and they told a few friends, etc. of his “master plan”, and as they checked on his comedic efforts, the re-direct would have started to show up on server logs at the Alaska State webserver – and maybe a spike in re-directs from a site called “CrackHo” raised the interest of a few state workers…

I do chuckle that the crackho.com website is now, in a futile attempt to raise funds from this “mistake” has added google ads to the page, when I visited the site the main ad was from SarahPac, a Sarah Palin associated PAC. (Hey, until there are more ads tageted at crack whores, her name on the web site is the only one that matches anything in the Ad Sense database I’m sure. Except for Alaska fishing trips and other such “Alaska” keywords.)

Honestly, this charge is being levelled on behalf of every citizen of the state of Alaska, to enforce a law enacted by their elected representatives. The law likely pre-dates her, and I doubt the C & D letter required approval by anyone outside the AG’s office.

Timothy Hutton: Then why have we never seen it’s like? Can you name another example of any governing body going after someone for a domain redirect? Your argument that this has nothing to do with the subject of the site’s content wears increasingly thin, despite steps taken to make it appear so.

No one says Palin ordered the enforcement of Alaska state law, not even Huffington Post (where Cory’s link points to). The Alaska AG’s office isn’t her personal legal team. The Alaska AG decides what to pursue and what to ignore I imagine…

GRIMC – As I recall the Wooten issue is the state trooper issue, right? The difference is that there were emails and phone calls to establish a link between the Palin family and the personnel efforts in that case. There exist no such links on this matter (yet, AFAIK), and that’s my point.

I think I see how this went – silly state attorney general’s office didn’t understand DNS technology, and since the state attorney general office in question represents Alaska, that means we can slam Sarah Palin, since she is personally responsible for every act by every state employee.

Is the Alaskan Attorney General really Sarah Palin’s legal team, or the Alaskan People’s legal team? (I think she has her own lawyers, since she has a legal defense fund – you know, to pay her own lawyers)

Is a client really responsible for the things the attorney does and does not know?